Augustine and Nicene Theology: Essays on Augustine and the Latin Argument for Nicaea

In this collection of essays, Michel René Barnes offers a new readingof the character and development of Latin Trinitarian theology in the fourthand fifth centuries. Although Augustine is the principal focus, he is treatedhere as an inheritor of an earlier Latin tradition. Antecedent theologians,most notably including Marius Victorinus, are given a revised interpretation,and Augustine himself is explored from multiple angles.

At every turn, developments in Augustine's thought are shown to be aresponse to the anti-Nicene theologies of the period. Most significantly, thisview decries the modern 'systematic' tendency to engage with Augustine onlythough a simplified version of late-nineteenth-century categories. Thisaccusation invites the question of how far modern theology can actually engagewith Patristic theology at all, but Barnes offers a way forward.